By the time Pan Long returned home, Pan Lei and Ren Yue had packed their things and were ready to leave.
Pan Long was startled. "Do you have to leave so soon?"
His father looked at him as if he were an idiot and sighed.
Then Pan Long understood.
"Well, leaving early is good too. It's a journey across a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers, and you still have to go to Jizhou to pick up Grandfather and the other elders..." He hurriedly changed his tune, and only then did his father smile.
Pan Long smiled back, laughing even harder inside. There was no need to ask whose idea this was. Nor did he need to ask why his father was in such a hurry to leave.
His secret stash had been exposed. Of course he needed to change the subject as quickly as possible.
Pan Lei really was in a rush. After just a few words, he could hardly wait to set out.
By then, Ren Yue would probably be too embarrassed to deal with her husband in front of his father-in-law. Pan Lei would have made it through this ordeal.
Pan Long saw his parents out of town. Watching them walk away through the snow, he could not help shaking his head and sighing.
"People often say a man has no dignity without a secret stash. But does having one give him dignity? It doesn't look that way to me. If anything, it might be worse!"
Back home, he found his uncle Pan Xiong to discuss important matters such as the spring planting.
"Don't worry. This year will be peaceful. Nothing will happen." Pan Xiong was past fifty, but he looked barely thirty. Dressed in a Daoist robe without a headpiece, he looked like a Daoist relaxing